Jeremy Cumberland

Am I right in thinking that the ground frame would need to be interlocked with the platform starter? Obviously the ground frame is interlocked with the home signal.

I don't know how accurate the date of 1820 is, but it seems very early for depicting steam road vehicles in such a way, and without being given the date, I would have placed it a decade later (or perhaps 15 or so years earlier, shortly after Trevithick's London Steam Carriage). In 1820, a few steam locomotives were being built in the north of England, but there weren't any in the south of the country that I am aware of, and in any case the vehicles look nothing like contemporary locomotives. I don't know of any steam powered road vehicles in Britain between Trevithick and the early 1820s, and none in London till 1830 or so. There were steam fire-pumps, though (I have no idea how common they were), and the vehicle in the foreground looks something like a cross between a fire pump and a bath chair. Well done to George Cruikshank if he was able to conjure up a steam carriage out of a fire pump, pre-empting John Ericsson and John Braithwaite's Novelty at the Rainhill Trials. I also note the "Safety Coach" on the far left, "guaranteed not to explode". Clearly, boiler explosions must already have been a concern.

"1820?" I hear you ask. Yes, that's right. In today's Guardian. Steam-powered boots. Read the whole article on outlandish modes of transport here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/18/shock-of-the-old-11-transport-fantasies-that-never-got-off-the-ground-from-jetpacks-to-swan-powered-paragliders

The kings were pretty uncontentious. There are (and were at the time) things to be said against quite a lot of them, but the sequence of monarchs is pretty much set in stone, including King Edward V (6016), who never actually reigned. King James II (6008) was so unpopular the British parliament invited the Dutch over to invade the country and turf him out, and really you can't get much worse than that. I don't know that Oliver Cromwell has ever been actively disliked or disapporved of by the estabishment. Certainly there are families even today who can say what side they were on in the Civil War, but he does not seem to have been a bad ruler. I note that there has never been a locomotive named after the Duke of Cumberland. His statue in Cavendish Square, London, was removed in 1868, so reviled had he become in the century or so since his death. We have a Prince William (47798), but that is named after someone else entirely. There is also a 7¼ inch miniature locomotive design "Sweet William", based in the 5 inch "Sweet Pea", which might ultimately be said to be derived from "Butcher" Cumberland, but the naming of the flower after him is disputed.

I had wondered how the single-coil single-polarity version worked. I don't think I'd like to build one into a circuit, not if any kind of automation were involved. What if it failed to set? If the fault were with the coil or latching mechanism, then one pulse ought to set it, but if the fault were with the contacts or somewhere else in the switched circuit, then the pulse would reset the relay. At least with a dual coil or reverse polarity relay you know whether a pulse will set or reset the relay, depending on the polarity of the pulse or which coil you send it to. I wonder if one of the contacts was used just for proving which way the relay was set.

Or one coil where you apply the reverse polarity to change state - which is of little use with solenoid point motors. Like @Colin_McLeod, until I got involved using miniature relays for operating models, I was used to the term "latching relay" being used for a relay powered via a pair of its own contacts (and a break switch of some description), and this does indeed require a continuous power supply. The problems of terminology. As far as I am aware, they aren't usually latched mechanically, it is just that they don't have a spring, so the armature stays in the position it was last moved to. They are also called bistable relays.

Famously so, although I had no idea it was done at Stratford. It was the only one for about a year, as I recall. It's very difficult to spot anything obviously different between 56036 and later large logo repaints. Each class of locomotive had the large logo livery applied differently, to suit the locomotive bodywork. The biggest differences were in the positions of the numbers and logo, but there were also differences in the black window mask and the extent of the yellow. Class 56s, for example, had a yellow band between the black and the roof all the way round the front, whereas class 50s only had this yellow band above the side windows, which were set lower than the windscreens (the black was extended downwards below the windows on the cab sides, too). Class 37s, of course, were very different from classes 47/50/56, having black bonnet tops and blue cab doors. Then there are elements that weren't really part of the large logo livery, such as orange cantrail stripes, which the 50s had (not sure if all of them did), but the 56s mostly did not (56126 appears to have had an orange stripe above the blue body sides, but not above the yellow ends). On top of this were the usual crop of non-standard variations, such as 56s with unpainted window frames (56103, for example), and the addition of 3-digit numbers to loco fronts (many/most class 56s), as well as the different roof colours mentioned by @Steven B earlier. The only thing I can see that's different between 56036 and later class 56s is that the black window surround is rather narrow, making the yellow band above the windows wider than on later locomotives, but I would hesitate to say there was a conscious change to make the black wider - it could easily be different paint shops doing things slightly differently.

This advert has just popped up on a web page I was viewing:

When I search for NG7, I get taken to Nottingham.

I agree with B stock, from what I have been able to discover. Given the pretty much spot-on window pattern on the trailer car, I did wonder that, since the motor car doesn't quite match B stock, whether they might be C or D stock, but I haven't found a side-on photo of a C or D stock motor car. They are all "underground" (or "Underground"). The distinction is between tube and surface (the "sub-" prefix only really has a historical use).

The timetable planner is a railway modeller with a small boxfile layout of a terminus station with two platforms and a rather limited fiddle yard. One of their regular moves is to take a train out of platform 1 and then bring the same train back into platform 2. Sometimes they forget to change the points so the train ends up back in platform 1 and they have to take it out again, remember to change the points this time, and then bring the train back into platform 2. At one exhibition, a punter watching this series of moves was heard to remark, "Not very prototypical, is it?" The owner-operator thought "Right. That's it! I'll show them," and so 5Y58 1955 Fort William to Fort William via Fort William was born. How long it will last is another matter. The driver doesn't much mind the second leg, where they might actually be doing something useful, but the first out and back from Platform 1 means they miss the end of Emmerdale on the telly in the mess. I've heard that they've had words with S&T for how to frig things so the train is reported as leaving from and returning to platform 1 while the driver is still sat drinking tea. The S&T guy is also a railway modeller and, like many S&T people, is something of an electronics enthusiast. His mind quickly progressed from thinking about interferring with track circuits to wondering what he might do with a shuttle module for automatically reversing the train at Fort William Junction. Watch this space.

I think so. The carriages all had door fault lights.

They were both in the Easter 2019 Windermere formation (6103 was the other coach). I didn't think 6115 was used in the 2018 trains; the only numbers I have are 6103-6000-9493.

What you describe isn't particularly difficult, but it does involve quite a lot of steps. Just to take the first thing: means creating a list of locos, counting them (to know the range for the random number generator), generating a random number and finally selecting a locomotive on the basis of the random number. You could do it in Excel, as @Steadfast suggested, if you have some way of running Excel during your operating sessions. In many ways, Excel isn't ideal. It has a habit of trying to convert text into numbers, which often gives problems with leading zeros (is your layout TOPS era, with class 08s, perhaps?). It's not very good at waiting for a set period of time. It is difficult to stop or pause a program when it is running, and if you are using the computer for other things at the same time, the running Excel program will tie up resources. None of these are show-stoppers, and Excel does have some great advantages: you are likely to have it already, you are probably already reasonably familiar with it, and it is pretty quick to get things up and running. The key thing is what you want the display to look like. Presumably you will have a list of off-shed locos (in column A, perhaps). How do you want the on-shed locos to be displayed? Perhaps they aren't displayed at all. Perhaps you will have a list of locos. You might then have the location/activity alongside. Perhaps if the activity is time-related, the remaining time might auto-update (this is fairly easy to do). Or perhaps you will have a list of locations, and place each loco against the location. How do you want "decisions" to be displayed? If you have a list of on-shed locomotives with locations/activities, then the loco number could simply move from the off-shed list to the on-shed list with the appropriate location/activity. This could be reinforced with a popup. Or perhaps you want a list of actions (new actions added at the top, perhaps), as a record of what has happened so far. Or some combination of these things. If you think that Excel might be suitable, then I suggest you create a template for the interface and post it on here (a screenshot will be fine). I would be happy to help you with the coding. In your template, leave room for a Start button (this can be the size of a default cell, but it would probably look better being two rows high).

Or perhaps LSL staff had been dispatched with some oil cans and tubs of grease. Someone said earlier in this thread that the current saga resembles an Ealing comedy. I would be loth to cast WCRC in the role of the preservationists in The Titfield Thunderbolt, but I can easily imagine a Harry Hawkins.

St Bees, like most passing loops, is only signalled for left-hand running. I can't say that I have watched the St Bees signaller particularly closely, but surely they have to put each token through the instrument, which would change the sequence of operations (notably the signaller not taking the token from the driver of the Barrow train and giving it directly to the driver of the Carlisle train). Also, if the up train is expected more than a couple of minutes after the down train (down trains are usually scheduled to arrive first), then the signaller often raises the level crossing barriers after the down train has stopped in the platform, and there is a signal at the Carlisle platform end specifically for this purpose. I don't know what information the St Bees signaller has to know when to expect trains. Departure times from Sellafield and Whitehaven, certainly, but they are both some distance away (Sellafield particularly), which might well mean the signaller lowers the barriers prematurely, expecting a train to arrive when it has been delayed en route.

[Windermere] 57316-6103-6000-9493-47245 [Oxenholme]. There's a video here. The Oxenholme end loco changed over the 2 weeks or so the service ran. It started with 37669. Then 33029 was used when the class 37 was needed elsewhere (apparently there were also complaints about the smoke and noise). Then 57314 was used from 25 June, and 47245 took over on 29 June. I think the coaches were the same throughout. WCRC also ran a service at Easter 2019 with 47851-6103-6115-9493-47826

I can understand why they have 1860 (catering) and 21266 (guard, and quite likely support crew) in the formation, but I wonder what reason they have for 4951. Perhaps they have invited the press along. They could then show the journalists the rather less pleasant conditions that fare-paying passengers have to put up with. Mind you, I suppose Mk2fs don't have steam pipes, so the coaches will all be cold.

Thanks, I didn't know exactly what it was, but I couldn't help thinking of the escape route at the back of a bus in the event of an accident.

Do you have a rule book you can quote from? There is nothing in RSR99 that precludes taking doors out of passenger use. It is only doors for use by passengers that require CDL. Of course, there may well be some other rule that prevents operators from locking doors out of use. @phil-b259 pointed out earlier in this thread that Mk1 RUs didn't have any passenger doors - something I had forgotten (and now that I do some checking, I don't think RBs had passenger doors either). Would these be permitted today? Doubtless the loose seats that RUs used to have wouldn't be permitted, but these could be replaced with fixed seats. I see WCRC does have an RU in its fleet (1961), but it has had the seating removed. Edit: I spent so long writing this that Phil got in before me.

The mark 2s are exempt from both regs (they aren't Mk1s and they have CDL). If the BSK isn't used by fare paying passengers, it is exempt from both regs (I see that it is not included in the WCRC's regulation 4 exemption certificate). 1860 has a regulation 4 exemption certificate. I have no idea what its regulation 5 status is. Perhaps it now has CDL fitted. I wonder what the rules are for locking all the doors on a carriage carrying passengers out of use. I think either it or one of the other vehicles at Fort William will have to, because the Mk2 set does not appear to have accommodation for the guard.

Usually a gauging wagon has one or more transverse plates or frames that more or less match the structure gauge profile (but are smaller all round), with projecting rods that can either measure the distance to a structure or else be set at the minimum clearance to see if anything hits them. Here is an example from Japan. The wagon in the Paul Bartlett photographs is clearly meant to be ridden in, but has no gauging frame. I wonder if it is already out of use in the 1979 photograph (it has COND painted on it in the 1983 one), and the gauging frame has been removed. Alternatively, perhaps it is for some other purpose. These days it's all done by lasers - see this page: http://www.traintesting.com/SGT.htm

It doesn't sound likely. They had a whole spare class 13 (only two were needed at the same time), and they could always have worked a pair of 08s in tandem.

The Telegraph is hardly on its own in the leagues of poor reporting of anything that involves an element of technical, scientific or specialist knowledge. I'm a leftie-leaning Guardian reader, and their reporting will be just as bad when it comes to facts and analysis. They won't, of course, report the Jacobite saga because there isn't really any angle for them - they will be generally pro-health and safety and generally pro-regulator, and of course the regulator hasn't said or done anything. Aren't you getting a little carried away in criticising their standard of written English, though? I might bemoan newspapers and journalists, but the standard of Engish is usually excellent. Of course, if you insist on "different from", "it was he" and "the person to whom I spoke" then you might be out of luck, but they were silly rules anyway. Anyway, I posted a couple of questions a little while ago which no one has yet answered. WCRC are currently moving a Black Five, a Mk1 BSK as a support coach, four Mk2fs and a Mk1 RMB to Fort William. The support coach is fine - if it doesn't carry fare paying pasengers it needs neither Regulation 4 nor Regulation 5 exemption. But...

Air condiitoned Mk2fs then. Two questions for those in the know: 1. What will power the air conditioning 2. What's the CDL status of 1860? I've not previously thought about catering vehicles, and 1860 was an RMB, so unless it has been extensively modified, it'll still have plenty of seating.